1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to protective coverings for domestic animals and more particularly to an equine mask and sun visor assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
For large animals, horses tend to be very sensitive and have unique veterinary problems. Horses have a relatively “thin” skin and can have a wide variety of skin problems. The horse's skin must protect it from many environmental insults, including trauma, parasites, insects, ultraviolet (UV) light and temperature extremes, for example.
Equine skin disorders can be classified in several different ways. Specific skin problems affect specific breeds, ages, and colors of horses. Different breeds are predisposed to specific skin problems, either indirectly through breed characteristics like color, or directly through genetics. Thoroughbred horses tend to be thin skinned and more sensitive to insect irritation and inflammation. Horses with non-pigmented skin like appaloosas and paint horses with white hair and pink skin are predisposed to skin cancer, like squamous cell carcinoma. The “true gray” is associated with a familiar, unique skin cancer.
Especially in the summer, when horses are ridden more and are reproductively active, horses tend to have more injuries, skin wounds and exposure to infectious disease. Intense summer solar radiation causes sunburn and photosensitization. Flies and insects contribute to a whole host of different skin-associated problems and other disease. Even dust can be very irritating to horse's eyes when combines with precipitation. Horses with white faces often sunburn, especially on the muzzle and about the eyes. Paint horses with short coats are particularly at risk, especially those with non-pigmented skin on the top line. High SPF sunscreens can be helpful for areas that burn. Simple sunburn differs from “photosensitization” (hypersensitivity to sunlight), which is a potentially serious skin condition characterized by sunburned, crusty skin that can die and slough away. It is usually caused by a reaction to something the horse has eaten, but the skin problem doesn't appear until the horse is exposed to sunlight and the condition is especially troubling when it occurs around the eyes.
Horse masks and blankets may be helpful but often offer too little protection from sunburn to sensitive areas around the eyes, especially when the horse is housed outside and exposed to the sun for the entire day. The typical “fly” mask known in the art provides some incidental sun protection but is adapted mainly for insect screening and any sun protection is merely incidental to the primary purpose of the mask. Moreover, the typical “fly” mask provides practically no incidental protection against other environmental insults to the horse's eyes, such as dirt, dust, water and water-borne particulates.
The lack of protective pigment gives some horse breeds their flashy color but it also makes them sensitive to the harmful effects of the sun, especially around the eyes. One useful method for protecting such animals from the sun is to stable them inside a closed stable for most of the day, thereby limiting sun exposure to short outdoor excursion intervals.
But horses have evolved as gregarious and free ranging animals to spend perhaps 60% of their time grazing in less sunny latitudes and continually moving over their home range together in close knit herds. Stabled horses are restricted to one or two hours exercise per day, have restricted social interaction and restricted mealtimes, quickly eating the concentrated rations provided. In these conditions stabled horses can develop emotional problems manifesting as repetitive, invariant and apparently purposeless activities such as licking, crib biting, weaving, box walking and pawing. These activities apparently are mechanisms for coping with the prolonged periods of boredom and frustration that have been shown to significantly increase corticosteroid blood levels damaging to long-term health.
Avoiding this emotional “stable-fever” requires identification of stimulating environments for the horse, especially early in life, and the simplest such environment is outside housing. However, the current art obliges the horse owner to choose between housing a frustrated horse inside to provide protection from serious environmental insults such as UV radiation, and exposing a non-frustrated horse to such insults while housed outside during the entire long summer day.
The art is replete with various mask assemblies for horses intended to protect against insects. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,128,891 issued to McMahon discloses a protective mask for a horse having a cap shaped to conform to a top region of a horse's head with two sleeves integral to the cap for receiving the ears of the horse and an opening between the sleeves for passing through a forelock of the horse. McMahon's invention also includes a mesh face panel and a nosepiece sealed to prevent insects from passing under the nosepiece and having a fringed nose panel extending downward to a point short of the horse's nostrils to insects from landing on the horse's nose and from passing under the nosepiece. Other than the little incidental sun protection provided by the insect mesh, McMahon neither considers nor suggests adapting his insect mask assembly to provide protection against the sun, dust or water.
As another example, in U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2008/0 092 497, Chang discloses a horse mask formed of a stiff thermoplastic mesh material with at least one swelling section formed over the horse's eyes to prevent contact with the eyes. Other than the little incidental sun protection provided by the stiff thermoplastic mesh, Chang neither considers nor suggests adapting his insect mask assembly to provide protection against the sun, dust or water.
Because of a prevalent belief that more than one mask layer is cumbersome and uncomfortable to the horse, practitioners in the art generally teach away from adding protection from other environmental insults to the horse's eyes, such as dirt, dust, water and waterborne particulates. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,345,751 issued to Edwards discloses a horse insect mask or halter manufactured by folding a single piece of screen material according to a pattern that ensures the formation of rigid darts in the portion of the mask corresponding to the eyes of the horse. Edwards teaches that more than one mask layer is cumbersome and uncomfortable to the horse and, other than the little incidental sun protection provided by the screen material, neither considers nor suggests adapting his insect mask assembly to provide protection against the sun, dust or water.
Although many practitioners including the inventor are convinced that outdoor housing is still the most natural and desirable stabling option for horses, the traditional fly masks, fly veils, and fly shields known in the art, at best, provide no more than a 70% ultraviolet (UV) ray block, which is not sufficient for long-term outdoor stabling.
Accordingly, there is a clearly felt need for the protection of the eyes and surrounding regions of sensitive horses during the long periods of outdoor housing from an accumulation of environmental insults such as dust, precipitation, water-borne particulates, flying insects and UV radiation. These unresolved problems and deficiencies are clearly felt in the art and are solved by this invention in the manner described below.